Mo’minis, an Israeli start-up we’ve featured before, had announced this evening a game development contest with a total of $4200 + handsets prizes. By registration to the first gamecast you would also be able to download the first release of Mo’Minis Studio, weeks before the official launch.

Mo’Minis is a Israeli start-up that have been developing a ‘game maker’ studio suite that allows people to design and develop 2D / 2.5D mobile games without code, using a drag and drop interface. The studio then produces j2me versions of the game that can run on a range of handsets.

Seems Mo’Minis aims to solve 2 major issues in the mobile game development space - the porting, and game development cycle. By offering a rapid development tool (drag & drop interface), designers can change the behavior of a game very quickly and experiment with different level design and scenarios.

It is not a simple ‘make a generic game’ type of tool since you’re expected to provide the graphics for your games yourself. The company is looking for talented game creators it could partner with and which will create games using the Studio.

The Studio also produces files that can run on many j2me based devices, though the company didn’t announce the full list of devices so far. Currently there are no support for iPhone or Android. According to the FAQ:

Unfortunately, both the iPhone and Android achieved a relatively low market penetration until now. Our initial focus is at giving our games maximum compatibility (and maximum distribution). However, this issue may change in the future as these platforms succeed at capturing a larger market share.

After downloading the Mo’Minis Studios, you could download a pack of sample games. These include Whac-A-Mole, Ice Jumper, Indian Bubble, Bricks (breakout clone) and Kill The Ducks (Shoot’em-up clone).

Mo’Minis, which was launched back in January 2008, has raised more than $400,000 from private investors led by Baruch Levanon. The company was founded by four people - Zvi Rabinovich, Eyal Rabinovich, Tzach Hadar and Aviv Revach. Zvi and Eyal are identical twins, which makes events the company take part in a little more interesting. Eyal Barzilay acts as CEO of the company.

We will leave you with a few screenshots from the Studio, and there are also some sample tutorials over here.